PLEASE DON'T COME

Political events have been known to be canceled
because of a lack of interest, but in a rare twist, one
in Sussex County just had to be canceled because of too
much interest.

It points to how much the Delaware Republicans are
starved for a worthwhile candidate for governor to go up
against Lt. Gov. John C. Carney Jr. or Treasurer Jack A.
Markell, whoever wins the nomination on the Democratic
side.

The event that was canceled was not supposed to be
notable, let alone balloon out of control.

Alan B. Levin, the Republican who is thinking about
running for governor after freeing himself from running
Happy Harry's, is test-driving his candidacy by making
the usual rounds to party meetings. One of them was
scheduled for this coming Tuesday in Rehoboth Beach.

Mary Spicer, the local Republican chair, figured 30
or 40 people would come to hear Levin and booked a room
in a community center to accommodate slightly more. To
drum up a little publicity, she did what a lot of
Republicans do. She asked A. Judson Bennett to put the
word out.

Bennett, a Lewes Republican, runs the Coastal
Conservative Network, a vast list of 4,000 e-mail
addresses. He sends out whatever suits him -- he is big
on anti-Clinton jokes -- forwarding along news stories,
press releases, meeting notices, patriotic sayings and
the periodic "Jud's Rant," usually railing about
overgrowth in Sussex County or illegal immigration.

The invitation to meet with Levin was sent Monday to
4,000 of Bennett's closest friends. It asked people to
let Spicer know if they planned to attend, and soon her
e-mail box was swelling like something on steroids. In
two days Spicer was begging Bennett to tell his network
that the event was so oversubscribed, it had to be
canceled.

"It took on a life of its own," Spicer said. "I began
to have responses from zillions of people. I had a small
location set up. The man doesn't even know if he is
going to run."

It says something that Spicer was inundated despite a
political dirty trick.

After Bennett e-mailed the invitation, he agreed to
forward information he was given to undercut Levin's
appeal among Republicans -- campaign finance records
showing in recent years he contributed $1,500 to U.S.
Sen. Joseph R. Biden Jr. and $1,000 to U.S. Sen. Thomas
R. Carper, token amounts by political standards for the
Democratic members of the state's three-member
congressional delegation.

Not surprisingly, it made no difference. Levin
already has made clear he is no lock-stepper. As the
chair of the Delaware State Chamber of Commerce, he
agreed to team with Samuel E. Lathem, a Democratic
loyalist who is the president of the Delaware AFL-CIO,
to plan a gigantic statewide fund-raiser, perhaps at
Frawley Stadium in Wilmington, for Biden's favorite-son
presidential campaign.

Levin has the look of someone on his way to becoming
a political phenomenon.

"It's curiosity, plus there's a constituency that
wants to vote Republican, and we really want to believe
we can win, and we want to see if Alan can make us
believe," said William Swain Lee, the retired judge who
was the Republican candidate for governor in 2004.

Levin, who spent time as the chief of staff for U.S.
Sen. William V. Roth Jr. before taking over the drug
store chain founded by his father, has a retailer's
appreciation for the outpouring of political interest in
Sussex County.

"I think it's great. It's like putting an ad out and
expecting 10 and getting 1,000," he said.

Lee, who lives in Rehoboth Beach, believes his fellow
Republicans may have missed something by not going ahead
with an event bursting its bounds. "I never had that
problem," he quipped. "We would have loved to have a
well-covered media event with with too many people to
get them all in."

The time will come, Spicer says, when Levin gets to
meet at the beach with local Republicans.